On November 14, 2025—more than two years after I requested these materials—the IRS finally produced this latest batch of FOIA documents. Even with large portions illegally redacted (the subject of my ongoing FOIA lawsuit), the unredacted portions alone reveal a coordinated government scheme between the IRS, the J5, OCIF, and the Puerto Rican government to engineer the shutdown of Euro Pacific Bank for public relations purposes, after failing to uncover any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. These emails further demonstrate that there was no legitimate regulatory basis for shutting down the bank. Instead, the OCIF Commissioner manufactured a pretext to advance the IRS/J5’s publicity objectives.
At the June 30th press conference announcing the bank’s closure, IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Jim Lee falsely claimed that the IRS and J5 “had nothing to do” with OCIF’s decision, saying they were merely there to “show support.” The FOIA emails expose that statement as a deliberate lie.
Months before OCIF issued its so-called “emergency” Cease and Desist order, the IRS was already planning and coordinating an “OCIF Partnership Press Conference” involving “multiple arms of the Puerto Rican government.” The event was originally scheduled to take place at the governor’s mansion, with the governor himself participating, before later being moved to OCIF’s office. This makes clear that the bank’s shutdown was intended from the beginning to be a high-profile political event, not an emergency regulatory action.
Internally, IRS officials celebrated the shutdown as a “huge milestone” and a “key disruption” in Operation Atlantis—even though the multiyear J5 investigation had completely exonerated the bank. Not one employee, officer, director, owner, or customer was ever charged with any crime. The investigation was, in truth, a total failure.
And that is precisely why the IRS needed OCIF.
Because the IRS lacked evidence to shut down the bank legally, and could not win anything in court, they instead used OCIF as a proxy enforcer to accomplish what the IRS could not: shut the bank down anyway, then leverage the shutdown to create a false public narrative of success.
The most damning evidence of this strategy appears in an email chain between Assistant Special Agent Shapley and IRS communications official Justin Cole. After Cole circulated a Bloomberg article crediting the IRS for the “demise” of Euro Pacific Bank, Shapley replied:
“Great article. Great job, Justin. Your work on this has been fantastic! The focus of that article is exactly what we intended to do… Great to see our plan realized.”
This single quote reveals four undeniable facts:
- The IRS had a premeditated plan for the bank’s shutdown.
- The media coverage matched the IRS’s desired narrative “exactly as intended.”
- The IRS used OCIF to accomplish what it could not do legally, since no crimes had been found.
- The true purpose of the shutdown was to generate favorable publicity—to portray the IRS and J5 as cracking down on tax crime, despite having found no tax crime at all.
The Bloomberg article, like others, served as the IRS’s victory lap — a way to sell the public on the illusion that Operation Atlantis was a success. In reality, the investigation was an abject failure: no evidence, no victims, no charges, no wrongdoing. The only “success” was convincing the media to repeat a false narrative that the bank had been closed for committing crimes the IRS couldn’t prove — because they never happened.
In short, the IRS and J5 won in the media, not in court. They manufactured a fake enforcement victory by (1) pressuring OCIF to shut down a legally operating bank, and (2) feeding select journalists a misleading narrative designed to create the appearance of a major international tax-crime bust.
What is truly astonishing is that all of this evidence comes from the unredacted portions of the FOIA production. If what they accidentally allowed to slip through is this bad, one can only imagine the extent of the misconduct hidden behind the improper redactions. My FOIA lawsuit aims to force the IRS to reveal everything.
Below, I am publishing the full set of documents so the public can see the truth for themselves—and witness what the IRS worked so hard to conceal.